Patron Pick – Ernest Goes to Jail

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)
Written by Charlie Cohen
Directed by John Cherry

Mocking the Ernest films would be easy because they never aspire to be anything more than silly, stupid fun. So, I’m not going to do that. I grew up watching the Ernest movies. I lived in Middle Tennessee, where many of these movies were filmed. The Ernest character had been a commercial mascot for our local Purity Dairy, one of many advertising gigs the classically trained actor picked up early in his career. That’s something I always loved about Jim Varney; he was a working-class actor in the truest sense, not the bullshit contemporary right-wing sense. Varney lived just a few miles from my childhood home, and we saw him once at our local Kroger supermarket. By the time Ernest Goes to Jail came along, Varney was quite established. 

Ernest P. Worrell (Varney) is the night janitor at Howard County Bank & Trust, where his friends Bobby and Chuck work as security guards. While trying to clean up with a floor polisher one night, Ernest is electrocuted and temporarily gains magnetic powers, which ends up creating an even bigger mess and getting our protagonist in trouble with his boss. The powers have worn off by the morning. Later, Ernest receives a jury duty summons, leading to some sight gags. 

Serving on the jury also puts him in the sights of Rubin, the felon on trial. His boss, Nash (also Varney), is back in the slammer and is a dead ringer for Ernest. The crime happened in the prison, so the defense makes a motion to bring the jury to see the crime scene for themselves. This also allows Nash and Ernest to switch places, freeing the criminal and locking the janitor up. Nash makes a mess of Ernest’s life while our hero manages to win over the hearts of his cellmates and escape. This leads to a showdown where Ernest’s powers return, and he saves the day.

I had gone into this review anticipating how the picture would hold up all these years later. Of all the Ernest films I’ve watched, Saves Christmas is the one with which I’ve clocked the most hours. I think that film still holds up despite its goofiness and corny nature because it ultimately has a big heart and a positive message about life. Goes to Jail feels like it’s missing that warm nature and is instead two concepts that have been smashed together and don’t make much sense. There’s a movie where Ernest gains magnetic powers, and there’s a movie where Ernest has a criminal doppelganger, and it never feels like the two ever successfully mesh into a cohesive whole.

I think it’s pretty evident that Ernest coasted a bit on the coattails of Pee Wee Herman. Like Pee Wee, Ernest received his own, albeit short-lived, Saturday morning series titled Hey Vern, It’s Ernest. Varney got to play other characters from his repertoire that would sometimes show up in his films. Goes To Jail also features Ernest’s home, filled with Rube Goldberg-style devices, much like all the homes Pee Wee was portrayed living in. But this wasn’t that odd of a trend then, with Martin Short’s Ed Grimley getting a cartoon series and Weird Al hosting a kids’ comedy series. I think Ernest’s appeal was slightly more limited because of regionality. Some people have a particular prejudice about a Southern accent, and they don’t find buffoon characters like Ernest charming.

Much like Pee Wee, it takes a particular scenario to make Ernest work in a film. Goes to Camp and Saves Christmas work because Ernest is a very good man with a big heart who loves everybody. Those movies are about our character helping out kids, so they are right in his wheelhouse. Scared Stupid, the follow-up to Goes to Jail, re-teams Ernest with kids, which is why it still works despite the darker subject matter. The kids are absent in Goes to Jail, so it never feels like the warm, caring Ernest that works. 

There are some good gags, though. The highlight to me was Ernest serving on a jury, mainly when his black ink pen cracks open while listening to the testimony. These were the bits of physical comedy that Varney would do so well. There was no need for special effects, such as magnetic powers. It’s just the comedian and a prop and the character digging a hole deeper while trying to solve the problem. It’s a relatable bit of comedy because the situation is where we’ve been or at least worried about it happening. Seeing Ernest smear the ink around with the intention of cleaning it up, only to look increasingly more and more ridiculous, certainly got a laugh from me this time around.

The other, more high-concept gags just never worked for me. The evil twin subplot felt more like Varney wanting to showcase his acting chops, which was reasonable. So often, actors with larger-than-life characters like Ernest get pigeonholed into that role. Varney was a very talented performer and probably felt the same pressure. He appreciated the opportunities the Ernest character brought him but hoped to be able to play more than just this one clown figure. He would get to do that to a small extent as Jed Clampett in the Beverly Hillbillies film and a recurring stint on the last season of Roseanne. His most prominent role would have been as Slinky Dog in Toy Story and Toy Story 2. 

Ernest Goes to Jail isn’t one of the actor’s best pieces of work as the character. Having grown up in Middle Tennessee, it definitely took me back. The exterior shots, filmed in and around Nashville, reminded me of home. I’m not clamoring to get back to the States or Tennessee, especially, but there was a faint air of nostalgia in my heart seeing those places. I just thought the film had been as good as I remembered it. It doesn’t put me off revisiting more Ernest films in the future. I’ve always been curious about Varney’s debut feature, made with his Ernest director John Cherry, Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam. I think I may have to sit down and finally watch that one and see how it compares to where Ernest ended up as a character.